BROTHER Donal Blake, education officer at the Irish Christian Brothers' Helen's Education Office, says that their membership peaked in 1968 with as many as 4,000 brothers worldwide. "Now," he says, "we're fewer than 2,000 and still sinking."
Blake says that, at its height, there were almost 1,200 Christian Brothers in Ireland. Now there are only some 350, although numbers are going up in Africa and are good in India.
He explains that the brothers retain 51 secondary schools in their southern province at present (roughly south of the Dublin Galway axis). Already 43 of these 51 schools have lay principals because of the process begun in the mid 1980s. Some schools currently with a lay principal continue to have a Christian brother or two on the staff. In co educational Westland Row, in Dublin, and in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, the Christian Brothers have a woman as principal.
Blake says that some schools have been amalgamated with other schools - such as Gorey CBS in Co Wexford which amalgamated with two very different schools to become what is now Gorey Community School. He cites other completed or pending amalgamations like Cashel, Co Tipperary (Presentation, Christian Brothers and the vocational school) and Kilrush, Co Clare (Christian Brothers, Mercy and the vocational school) and Roscrea, Co Tipperary (Christian Brothers, Sacred Heart and the vocational school).
Donal Blake expects that at least some of the current 51 schools in the St Helen's province will have amalgamated within the next ten years.
"Very few people are willing to become trustees," he says, explaining that they haven't withdrawn as trustees from anywhere except from the community schools. "We're disappointed. Becoming trustees doesn't seem to appeal to the dioceses."
He says that a few years ago two brothers from the same school died. The Christian Brothers had to pull out because they had no members to replace them. "The present system won't go on. It can't," he says. "The average age of a Christian Brother is 63. Anno Domini is ticking away. We're in a period of change and we can't be sure of the future."
